


Of Death and Snakes

by AntonSweetie



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Drinking, Gen, Vague Spoilers, Vent Writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-23 14:56:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16621157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntonSweetie/pseuds/AntonSweetie
Summary: Alexios deals with grief in his own way. Spoilers for the chapter "Rising From The Ashes."





	Of Death and Snakes

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING! This fic deals with spoilers for the main game. No names are mentioned, but please read at your own risk. 
> 
> Thanks to salanaland for letting me know that I didn't warn it enough. Sorry to everyone who I accidentally spoiled! I'll be much more careful in the future. ♡

Alexios knew of death. He knew of the death that came slowly, through decaying the body from the inside out. He knew of the death that came from Hephestus, burning and singeing until your body couldn’t take anymore. He knew of painless death in the middle of the night, with blade in hand and moonlight gagged by the clouds.

He didn’t know of this kind of death. This kind of death was unfamiliar and sank its fangs into him before he knew how to fight it. It coiled around him like a cobra and squeezed the breath out of his lungs and throat. He wanted to scream but found no sound.

Even as he was sitting at the very top of the _Adrestia’s_ mast, he could feel the pressure of death surrounding him like water. It drowned him. 

The only way to fight the drowning, he found, was to burn it off with the cheapest, strongest wine he could find. Taste didn’t matter; it was what it did to his mind that he cared about. He wanted the numbness that he felt when he took down soldiers from either country, the weightlessness of watching another faceless person spittle blood until the dirt itself was the color of rust. 

Yet no matter how much he drank, how many empty wineskins he threw off the side and onto the empty deck, the snake still had a hold of him. 

“Beware of the snakes in the grass,” Nikolaos had told him. Alexios knew those snakes. He kept an eye out for them. But Nikolaos never told about the snakes that wound about his heart, that hissed in his ears that it was his fault. He should have been faster. He should have been smarter. He should have been more careful. He should have, he should have, he should have.

He was a failure. And her body was the proof of that.


End file.
